by Nora Roberts
The cannon blast of thunder boomed, rolled, echoed, and shook the valley.
“You won’t get this in New York.”
“We have thunderstorms back east.”
Lil just shook her head as she watched the show. “Not like this. City storms are inconveniences. This is drama, and adventure.”
“Try hailing a cab in Midtown during a storm. Baby, that’s an adventure.” Still, he laughed and took her hand. “But you’ve got a point. This is E Ticket.”
“Here comes the rain.”
It swept in, fast-moving curtains. She watched the wall rush through, and the world went a little mad. Pounding, roaring, slashing in one titanic roar.
She turned to him, clamped around him, and took his mouth with as much fury and power as the storm. Rain dashed them, hard pebbled drops the wind shoved under the porch roof. Thunder crashed, an ear-ringing explosion. The wind chimes and dinner bells clanged and rang insanely.
She drew back, but not before she’d added a quick, teasing bite. “Every time you hear thunder, you’re going to remember that.”
“I need to be alone with you. Somewhere. Anywhere.”
She glanced toward the kitchen window. Her parents and the Wilkses stood watch on the front porch as she and Coop had chosen the back.
“Quick. Run!” Laughing, she pulled him off the porch, into the wild rain and wind. Instantly soaked, they raced for the barn.
Lightning forked the sky, electric sizzle. Together they dragged the door open to stumble inside, breathless and drenched. In the stalls, horses shifted restlessly as the rain pounded, as thunder rolled.
In the hayloft, they stripped off wet clothes, and took each other eagerly.
IT WOULD BE their last day together. When it was over he would say his goodbyes to Joe and Jenna, and then somehow to Lil.
He’d said goodbye before, but he knew it would be harder this time. This time, more than ever before, they were each taking different directions at that crossroads.
They walked their horses as they had so many times before, to the place that had become theirs. The fast-running stream at the verge of the pines where the wildflowers danced.
“Let’s keep going. We’ll come back,” she said, “but when we stop, it’ll be the last time. So let’s keep going for a while.”
“I might be able to come out for Thanksgiving. It’s not that far away.”
“No, it’s not that far away.”
“Christmas for sure.”
“Christmas for sure. I’m leaving in eight more days.” She hadn’t started to pack, not yet. She’d wait until Coop had gone. It was a kind of symbol. As long as he was here, everything stayed. Everything was solid and familiar.
“Nervous yet? About college.”
“No, not nervous. Curious, I guess. Part of me wants to go, get started, find out. The other part wants everything to stop. I don’t want to think about it today. Let’s just be.”
She reached out, took his hand for a moment. They walked in a silence full of questions neither knew how to answer.
They passed a little falls engorged from summer storms, crossed a grassland green with summer. Determined not to drop into a brood, she took out her camera. “Hey!” He grinned when she aimed it at him. Then, with their horses close abreast, she leaned over, held the camera out.
“You probably cut off our heads.”
“Bet I didn’t. I’ll send you a print. Coop and Lil in the backcountry. See what your new cop friends think about that.”
“They’ll take one look at you and think I’m a lucky guy.”
They took a spur trail through tall trees and hefty boulders, with views that swept to forever. Lil pulled up. “Cougar’s been through here. The rains washed most of the tracks away, but there’re markings on the trees.”
“Your female?”
“Maybe. We’re not far from where I spotted her that day.” Two months before, she thought. The kittens would be weaned by now, and big enough for their ma to take them with her when she hunted.
“You want to try to track her.”
“Just a little ways. I’m not sure I can anyway. We’ve had a lot of rain in the last few days. But if she’s territorial, she could be in the area where I first saw her. It’d be good luck,” she decided on the spot. “For us both to see her on your last day, the way I did on your first.”
He had the rifle if he needed it, though he didn’t mention it. Lil wouldn’t approve. “Let’s go.”
She led the way, searching for signs as the horses picked and plodded. “I wish I was better at tracking.”
“You’re as good as your father now. Maybe even better.”
“I don’t know about that. I was going to practice a lot more this summer.” She sent him a smile. “But I’ve been distracted. The brush, the boulders. That’s what she’d stick to if she was hunting. And I’m not sure . . .” She stopped, and eased her horse to the right. “Scat. It’s cougar.”
“I think it’s good tracking to be able to tell one pile of shit from another.”
“Tracking 101. It’s not real fresh. Yesterday, the day before. But this is part of her territory. Or if not hers, probably another female. Their territories can overlap.”
“Why not a male?”
“Mostly they steer clear of females, until mating season. Then it’s all, Hey, baby, you know you want it. Of course, I love you. Sure, I’ll respect you in the morning. Get it, then get gone.”
He narrowed his eyes as she grinned. “You have no respect for our species.”
“Oh, I don’t know, some of you are okay. Besides, you love me.” The minute the words were out, she straightened in the saddle. Couldn’t take them back, she realized, and shifted to look him in the eye. “Don’t you?”
“I’ve never felt about anyone the way I do about you.” He gave her an easy smile. “And I always respect you in the morning.”
There was a nagging thought at the back of her brain that it wasn’t enough. She wanted the words, just the power of those words. But she’d be damned if she’d ask for them.
She continued on, aiming for the high grass shelf where she’d seen the cat take down the calf. She found other signs, more scrapings. Cougar and buck. Brush trampled down by a herd of mule deer.
But when they reached the grass, nothing roamed or grazed.
“Nice spot,” Coop observed. “Is this still your land?”
“Yeah, just,” she replied as she gazed across the vista.
She started across the grass toward the trees where she’d once watched the cougar drag her kill. “My mother said there used to be bear, but they got hunted out, driven out. The cougar and the wolf stay, but you have to look to find them. The Hills are a mixing bowl, biologically speaking. We get species here that are common to areas in every direction.”
“Like a singles bar.”
She laughed at him. “I’ll take your word. Still, we lost the bear. If we could . . . There’s blood.”
“Where?”
“On that tree. On the ground, too. It looks dry.”
She swung her leg across the saddle.
“Wait. If this is a kill site, she could be close. If she’s got a litter she won’t be happy to see you.”
“Why is it on the tree? So high on the tree.” Drawing out her camera, Lil walked closer. “She could’ve taken out an elk or deer, I guess, and it fought, or it hit the tree. But it just doesn’t look like that.”
“And you know how that would look?”
“In my head I do.” She glanced back, saw he had the rifle. “I don’t want you to shoot her.”
“Neither do I.” He’d shot nothing but targets, and didn’t want to shoot the living, especially her cat.
Frowning, Lil turned back to the tree, studied it, the ground. “It looks like she dragged the kill off that way. See how the brush looks? And there’s more blood.” She crouched, poked at the ground. “There’s blood on the ground, on the brush. I thought she took the buffalo calf that wa
y. More east. Maybe she had to move her den, or it’s another cat altogether. Keep talking and stay alert. As long as we don’t surprise her or threaten her or her young, she won’t be interested in us.”
She inched her way, trying to follow the signs. As she’d said, the trail was rough here, steep, rocky. It didn’t surprise her to see some signs of hikers, and she wondered if the cat had moved to avoid them.
“There’s more scat. Fresher.” She looked over and just beamed. “We’re tracking her.”
“Whoopee.”
“If I could get a shot of her and her young . . .” She stopped, sniffed. “Do you smell that?”
“Now I do. Something’s dead.” When she started forward, he took her arm. “I can follow it from here. You stay behind me.”
“But—”
“Behind me and the rifle, or we turn back. I’m stronger than you are, Lil, so believe me when I say we’ll turn back.”
“Well, if you’re going to get all macho.”
“I guess I am.” He walked forward, following the stench.
“West,” she directed, “a little more west. It’s off the trail.” She scanned brush, trees, rocks as they moved. “God, you wonder how she can stomach anything that smells like that. Maybe they abandoned the kill. Chowed down, moved on. Nothing picked clean is going to smell like that. It looks like a lot of blood around here, and then into the brush.”
She stepped over. She didn’t move in front of him, but beside him. It wasn’t her fault the signs were on her side. “I see something in there. Definitely something there.” She strained to see. “If she still considers it hers, and she’s around, she’ll let us know quick. I can’t see what it is, can you?”
“Dead is what it is.”
“Yes, but what was the prey? I like to know what . . . Oh, my God. Cooper. Oh, my God.”
He saw it as she did. The prey had been human.
LIL WASN’T PROUD of the way she’d handled herself, the way her legs had buckled, the way her head had gone light. She’d damn near fainted, and certainly would’ve gone down if Coop hadn’t gotten hold of her.
She managed to help him mark the spot, but only because he’d ordered her to keep back. She made herself look, forced herself to see and remember what had been done before she’d gone back to her mount for her canteen to drink deeply.
She’d been steadier, and able to think clearly enough to mark the trail for those who would have to come for the remains. Coop kept the rifle out as they rode back home.
There’d be no final tryst by the stream.
“You can put the rifle away. It wasn’t a cat that killed him.”
“Her, I think,” Coop said. “The size and the style of the boots, and what was left of the hair. I think it was a woman. You think wolves, then?”
“No, I didn’t see any signs of wolves near there. It’s the cougar’s habitat, and they’d leave her alone. It wasn’t an animal who killed her.”
“Lil, you saw what I saw.”
“Yeah.” It was etched in her mind. “That was after. They fed after. But the blood on the tree, it was high, and there weren’t any cat tracks there. No tracks until a good ten yards off. I think someone killed her, Coop. Killed her and left her there. Then the animals got at her.”
“Either way, she’s dead. We have to get back.”
When the trail opened enough, they spurred to a gallop.
HER FATHER GAVE them whiskey, just a swallow each. It burned straight down to the sickness in her belly. By the time the police arrived, the idea of being sick had passed.
“I marked the trail.” She sat with Coop and her parents and a county deputy named Bates. She used the map he’d brought, highlighting the route.
“Is that the way you went?”
“No, we took scenic.” She showed him. “We weren’t in a hurry. We came back this way. I saw the blood on the tree here.” She made a mark on the map. “Drag marks, more blood. A lot probably washed away in the rain, but there was enough cover so you can see there’s blood. Whoever killed her did it there, at the tree, because the blood’s a good five feet up—close to five and a half, I’d say. Then he dragged her off the trail to about here. That’s where the cougar found her. She must’ve dragged her from there, to better cover.”
He made notes, nodded. He had a weathered and quiet look about him, almost soothing.
“Any reason you think she was murdered, Miss Chance? What you’re describing sounds like a cougar attack.”
“When’s the last time we had a cougar attack a person around here?” Lil demanded.
“It happens.”
“Cats go for the throat.” Bates shifted his gaze to Coop. “Isn’t that right, Lil?”
“Yeah, their typical kill method is the neck bite. It takes the prey down, often breaking the neck. Quick and clean.”
“You rip out somebody’s throat, there’s going to be all kinds of blood. It’d gush, wouldn’t it? This was more like a smear. It wasn’t . . . spatter.”
Bates lifted his eyebrows. “So, we’ve got a cougar expert and a forensic specialist.” He smiled when he said it, kept the remark friendly. “I appreciate the input. We’ll be going up, and we’ll look into all that.”
“You’ll have to do an autopsy, determine cause of death.”
“That’s right,” Bates said to Coop. “If it was a cougar attack, we’ll handle it. If it wasn’t, we’ll handle that. Don’t worry.”
“Lil said it wasn’t a cougar that killed her. So it wasn’t.”
“Has a woman gone missing? In the last few days?” Lil asked.
“Might be.” Bates rose. “We’ll head on up now. I’m going to want to talk to you again.”
Lil sat silent until Bates went out to mount up with his two-man team. “He thinks we’re wrong. That we saw what was left of a mule deer or something and got spooked.”
“He’ll find out different soon.”
“You didn’t tell him you were leaving in the morning.”
“I can take another day. They should know who she is and what happened to her in another day. Maybe two.”
“Can you eat?” Jenna asked.
When Lil shook her head, Jenna wrapped an arm around her, stroking when Lil turned her face to her mother’s breast. “It was awful. So awful. To be left like that. To be nothing but meat.”
“Let’s go up for a while. I’m going to draw you a hot bath. Come on with me.”
Joe waited, then got up and poured two mugs of coffee. He sat, looked Coop in the eye. “You took care of my girl today. She can take care of herself, I know that’s true, most ways, most times. But I know you saw to her today. You got her back here. I won’t forget it.”
“I didn’t want her to see it. I’ve never seen anything like it, and hope I never do again. But I couldn’t stop her from seeing it.”
Joe nodded. “You did what you could, and that’s enough. I’m going to ask you for something, Cooper. I have to ask that you don’t make her any promises you’re not sure you can keep. She can take care of herself, my girl, but I don’t want her holding on to a promise that has to be broken.”
Coop stared into the coffee. “I don’t know what I could promise her. I’ve got enough to rent an apartment, as long as it’s cheap, for a few months. I’ve got to try to make the grade at the academy. Even if I do, a cop doesn’t make a lot. I come into some money when I’m twenty-one. A trust fund thing. I get more when I’m twenty-five, then thirty, and like that. My father can tie it up some, and he threatened to, until I’m forty.”
Joe smiled a little. “And that’s worlds away.”
“Well, I’ll be living pretty thin for a while, but I’m okay with that.” He looked up again, met Joe’s eyes. “I can’t ask her to come to New York. I thought about it, a lot. I can’t give her
